Chapter 8 #2
fun but eminently conquerable challenge. I might have stayed to watch, but from the other side of Salvation, the hellgate
had bucked and spat, and a corresponding rush of exhilaration had flooded through me. That gate marked the veil between Hell
and earth, and it could not be torn without grave repercussions. Lucifer’s job had always been to keep it intact, to hold
dominion over the place of his banishment.
I was here to watch him fail.
Once the gate broke, the Morningstar would be forced to face a fresh judgment from Heaven. He couldn’t be banished again,
but he could be annihilated, and the very thought of it was deeply soothing to me. I’d spent millennia nursing my aged bitterness as I
dreamed of Lucifer’s utter cessation, his holy obliteration. It’s what should have been done in the first place.
Outside Elijah’s mansion, a few dark shadows slipped out with howls ringing through the air at a pitch the humans couldn’t
hear, the hellgate’s stench trailing off their tails. Demons! I clutched my hands together to suppress my joy. The gate had opened for just long enough to let them out! The warp on it
was working, getting stronger. I could feel that it had been quickly warded again, but this was good, this was enough. Gates
want to open. The only thing that keeps them shut is the lock or the latch, and no prince of Hell could make one strong enough to counter the warp that was currently damaging that hellgate with a slow, inexorable determination.
I followed the demons as they entered the woods separating the mansion from the rest of Salvation. One of the princes of Hell
had left the hellgate—they would be trying to track the demons, and I couldn’t have that, so I turned the paths behind me
in on themselves, confusing the land and blurring the air. A minor interference—surely it wouldn’t count, especially against
a prince of Hell. I didn’t want whoever it was to get in the way, not when I was dying to see what the demons would do to
the humans, the depraved acts that would finally give Heaven the right to intervene and penalize Lucifer for allowing this
to happen. I had waited so long for this moment, and where was the King of Hell? Busy being distracted by my precious Galilee. It was so perfect I could
scream. My soul felt light and airy—everything was happening as it should, as the will of God dictated, manifested. I almost danced through the trees as the demons skittered ahead of me, right until Collette Kincaid stepped out from behind
a hickory trunk and blasted a demon full of salt.
I was already cloaked—it wouldn’t do for demons to notice an angel trailing them—but I still froze in place, irritation replacing
my euphoria. This was what I got for placing Galilee with a family of hunters; they had an annoying tendency to do their jobs.
I swung myself up to a low branch and watched with resigned dismay as the Kincaids did what they did best. Collette was a
spectacular shot, and her sister, Shirley, was by her side, her machete cleaving through air and sin with a whistling deadliness.
Peony wore iron knuckles, beating in the shadowed faces of Hell’s creatures with brutal blows. And, of course, in the center
of it all was Darling Kincaid with her iron scythe, unstoppable and expressionless. The woman moved as if she’d sloughed off
decades before stepping on the battlefield. Under any other circumstances, it would have been faintly pleasurable to watch
a handful of demons be dispatched with such professional grace. Even sweet little Zélie was garroting a demon with an iron
chain, her face turned away as it hissed and smoked.
Celestial wasn’t in the first line of attack, to my surprise, and it took me a moment before I spotted her well in the back, crouching in a hollow with Galilee’s friends, Leah standing guard a few feet away with her crossbow.
Bonbon’s eyes were dark ponds in her face, wide and terrified.
A cloud of bees hovered a few feet behind them in the air—Galilee’s swarm, tagging along.
“Demons?” Bonbon whispered loudly. “Are you fucking serious?”
Oriak? cut a look at her sideways. “We just got our memories back and Lucifer was in them, Bon. I think a couple of demons are the least of our problems.” She gave Celestial a glare that was almost as
irritated as I felt. “Besides, sure seems like Gali’s family knows exactly what to do with them, doesn’t it?”
Celestial grinned at both of them. “Sounds like Gali didn’t tell y’all shit about where she comes from, huh?” She sounded
decidedly smug about it.
“Not sure I would’ve believed her if she told me she came from a family of demon hunters,” Bonbon replied faintly.
Celestial flapped a hand. “We just hunters. No demon specialty, really.”
Bonbon turned even paler than she already was. “I don’t want to know what else there could be to hunt, thank you very much.”
Sage put her double-barrel to a demon’s head and blasted it with salt and iron shot. Shadowy gore exploded out, splattering
on her face, but her whites remained untouched.
Oriak? grimaced. “And here I thought prayer and exorcism was the best way to deal with demons,” she said, almost to herself.
“Nigerian churches have a lot of misinformation to answer for.”
Celestial chuckled, and I moved on again, leaving the battle and the humans behind me. It didn’t matter if this brief incursion
was stopped. These demons were just a spurt, nothing compared to what would happen when the hellgate finally gave way. It
would be glorious then, bloody and terrible, and there simply weren’t enough Kincaids alive to stop it.
All I had to do was wait.